my first attempt at putting up: kumquat marmalade.

when i started making yogurt at home, i began wondering how i could change up the flavor of the yogurt so that i wasn't eating the same yogurt day in and day out. fresh fruit would be one way, but i'm not always good about having fresh fruit around. then i thought that maybe a spoonful of jam would work. if i had at least 2 or 3 different kinds around, i would have a decent variety of flavoring agents for my yogurt.

so i bought this book. it had pretty good reviews on amazon and i wanted something relatively easy that would allow me to get a hang of the basics but with a somewhat modern twist. once it arrived i ogled the book - but of course, never got around to making anything. my parents have a white peach tree and i had hoped to try a recipe out of the book using the white peaches from their yard. but by the time i asked, the tree was done for the season. so it kind of got pushed to the back burner.

but every time i looked at the book in my pile of cookbooks, the urge to make a jam was there. and even though it seemed daunting, i knew that i wanted to. especially after i made the vanilla extract for the holidays. i read squid ink (the la weekly food blog) on a regular basis and i came across this post. which led me to this recipe for kumquat marmalade from food in jars. the best thing about it was that it was small batch. i couldn't wait to try it. the recipe said labor intensive, but i figured, i'd give it a try.

kumquat is one fruit that my parents don't have in their yard. the saturday over president's day weekend, i was going to meet up with some friends in anaheim, so i decided to get an early start and hit up the soco farmer's market that was sometimes mentioned on stick a fork in it (the oc weekly food blog). it's held every saturday morning in the parking of the soco collection and the oc mart mix. (which also allowed me to pop into portola coffee lab before meeting up with my friends!) it's a very small farmer's market (it's only one small portion of the torrance farmer's market which is the one i usually go to) and the selection is pretty limited. but the quality of the produce available is still great. i picked up about a pound of kumquats (to make the marmalade) as well as sweet limes, blood oranges, and beets.



i didn't get to it as fast as i had hoped, but i did get around to trying out the recipe. it is REALLY energy and labor intensive. if my sister didn't help me with prepping the kumquats, it would have taken a little bit longer. since i'm slow, it took me a good portion of the day from start to finish.



i started with just over a pound of kumquats, and followed the recipe exactly - 1.5 cups sugar and 2 cups water. the only thing that i had difficulty with was the time. it took a little longer than i thought it would, and even though i had 2 thermometers, i still had difficulty reaching the desired temperature of 220F even though i had surpassed the minimum 212F. good thing i had stuck in a saucer in the freezer so i could do the plate test. it passed the plate test with flying colors! the down side of the thermometer fiasco was the fact that i think i overcooked the jam. now that it's cooled, it's pretty stiff!

the bundle in the pot are the seeds and the inner membranes of the kumquats wrapped in cheesecloth. these contain the natural pectin needed for the marmalade to set.



i actually did the waterbath canning process and so my finished marmalade can be stored away for a bit. with the exception of the slight stiffness to the marmalade, i'm pretty happy with the results. it's not too sweet, and you still get the flavor of the kumquats and the slight bitterness it has when you eat the kumquat fresh.





the recipe yielded 2 half pint jars. and since i had just over a pound of kumquats when i started, i had just a little that didn't fit in the jars that i can enjoy right away. not that i couldn't pop open one of the jars i made, but at least i can savor it a little bit and enjoy the taste of kumquats when i can't find fresh ones. and as an aside i'm so loving these ball jars i found out at target!

making yogurt at home.

yogurt is one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast. i usually tend to get either the french village vanilla from trader joe's or the individual containers of yoplait in various flavors (but only when it's on sale), and sometimes stir in a bit of granola. so about a month or so ago i googled instructions on how to make yogurt at home. upon learning how relatively it was to do, i thought i would give it a shot. so soon after i ventured to make my own homemade yogurt. armed with a half gallon of horizon fat free milk, some plain yogurt, some equipment and instructions, i had a little kitchen project on my hands. i followed the instructions i found on serious eats.

it is really, really, super easy to do. you don't even need to buy any fancy equipment. the only equipment you need is a pot with a lid and a thermometer. the first thing you want to do is heat up the milk to about 185 to 195 degrees F and then hold it in that range for at least 10 minutes. since i didn't want to warm it up too quickly, i opted for the double boiler method to warm up my milk. since it was the first time i was trying this, i checked the thermometer constantly. once i got the milk in range, i held it there for just over 10 minutes. having it on the double boiler really made it easy to hold it in range - i didn't have to adjust the heat on the stove at all. after the 10 minutes was up, i took the pot of milk off of the double boiler and put it into a water bath, and stirred the milk. this helped to bring down the temperature of the milk fairly quickly - the target temperature being about 115 degrees F. it is hot enough for the yogurt cultures to thrive but not hot enough to kill them. once cooled to the desired temperature, i took about a ladle full of the warm milk into a small bowl, and combined it with a few heaping spoonfuls of the plain yogurt i had bought. i actually used siggi's icelandic skyr, which is a very thick strained yogurt. (in my opinion, i think it's even thicker than greek yogurt!)



once the milk and yogurt are combined to make a smooth mixture, i poured that back into the warm milk, and stirred again, to make sure the cultures were well incorporated into the lukewarm milk. at this point, you're pretty much done. you want the cultures to incubate and do their thing, so i put a lid on the pot, wrapped it up in a towel, and stuck it in the oven overnight. in total it probably incubated for about 6 hours. in order to help keep the milk mixture as warm was possible. i actually had the oven on while i was in the process of warming up the milk, and turned it off once i turned the heat off of the milk.



in the morning, i checked on my little project. i unwrapped the towel, opened the lid and took a look inside. it looked and smelled like yogurt. i then put the whole pot in the fridge. once cooled, i checked the results of my little experiment. before making my own yogurt, i had read that the more fat content in the milk, the creamier and thicker the yogurt would be. so since i had opted to use fat free milk, it was rather thin in consistency, but it was a successful first try nonetheless.



i immediately portioned it out into 3/4 cup portions, about the average for most individual yogurt containers, give or take. i ended up with almost 10 portions from a half gallon of milk! one taste tho, and i knew i was in trouble. i didn't mind the thin consistency, but it was tart. i mean, really tart. i like tart but not that much tart. so for my first bowl of home made yogurt, i tossed in some blackberries and blueberries, a couple drops of vanilla extract, and a sprinkling of sugar. that improved the taste a lot and made me feel like i was eating something healthy. to finish eating this first batch of home made yogurt, i stirred in some macerated fruit (mostly berries) and had a fruit yogurt. as you can also save some as a starter for your next batch of yogurt, i opted to leave one portion as a starter for my next attempt.



after my first try into making yogurt, i found out that one of my co-workers had been doing it for years. she advised that no special equipment was needed, and as long as you keep the pot wrapped in a blanket or towel and out of drafts, you should successfully make yogurt every time. she also let me know that after a couple or rounds of reculturing i'd probably want to start with a fresh starter.

since the first attempt, i've made three more attempts. my second batch of yogurt was strawberry yogurt made from strawberry milk. i used store bought nesquick strawberry milk, a packet of yo'gurmet freeze dried starter, and also a spoonful of my first batch of fresh made yogurt. the strawberry yogurt turned out okay, a little more tart than i had expected, and served with some fresh cut strawberries, it was rather good. just a few days ago, i attempted to make yogurt that was slightly flavored with some vanilla extract, sugar, and honey. as a starter, i used several spoonfuls of my first batch of yogurt. however, this batch did not turn out at all - epic fail! i'm not sure why it didn't turn out, because i can think of more than one factor, but i think the main reason was that perhaps the cultures in my first batch of yogurt were no longer active by this time - it had been over a week after all. so the next day, i attempted it again. this time, the market i shopped at was all out of the horizon fat free organic milk i usually get, so i ended up buying the 1% milk. i made another attempt. i didn't add as much other stuff as i had in my failed attempt. to a half gallon of milk, i added 3 tablespoons of honey, and used the freeze dried culture as my starter. everything else i did the same as before, and again, i had successful batch of yogurt.

however, once i tried the batch made from the 1% milk - i immediately observed several differences from my first attempt. the first was its consistency - for being only 1% milk fat content, it yielded a lot creamier and thicker yogurt than the fat free milk. the second was the smell of the yogurt - i could smell the standard tart smell of yogurt, but it wasn't nearly as pungent as my first attempt. and once i tasted it - there was a difference as well. it wasn't nearly as tart as my first attempt. even though i know the honey that i had added to the milk mixture probably helped, it still wasn't nearly as tart. so now i'm wondering if it was the starter - i tried what was left of the icelandic skyr after making my first batch, and it was really and seriously tart, made worse in my mouth due to the thick texture of it. the 1% milk yogurt was made using the freeze dried starter. i'll have to experiment again to make it with the freeze fried culture (or a first generation reculture) but with no sweeteners added to see how tart the yogurt actually turns out. i'm also planning on trying a different sweetener, such as agave.